Regulations
by Razor Scion
Summary: Being a deity isn't all its cracked up to be. When Madoka skips out on the paperwork, greater forces start taking an interest in her affairs...


Hermes adjusted his suit and tie. It was a nervous habit of his whenever he came across something that made him uncomfortable. Seeing new deities and bringing them into the fold of the Pan-Dimensional Multi-Pantheon Alliance was pretty much his in his job description and he'd long since tired of bringing in the wide-eyed strays that could barely handle their newfound godhood.

No, what irked Hermes at this juncture was not the fact that he'd found a wide-eyed stray deity struggling with their powers… but rather the fact that he'd gone to the N-time-space coordinates where that deity was residing and had found a European style castle.

A large castle.

Positively _enormous_.

And that wasn't counting the moat, the parapets, the truly _vast_… tracts of land, the gardens and the seemingly never-ending stream of young girls that seemed to populate it all.

Counting up all the code violations mentally, he rapped on the gargantuan castle door.

Three meters to his right, a smaller door opened up in the gargantuan one and a bluenette stuck her head out and eyed him. Just as he started to head towards her, she slammed the door shut. Frowning in consternation, Hermes marched up to the inset door and knocked three times in rapid succession.

A moment later, a small wooden slit slid open revealing a pair of blue eyes. Hermes opened his mouth to speak but the slit was snapped shut. Wondering what was going on, he was about to knock again when the door suddenly burst open and a diminutive but very pushy bluenette barged right into his personal space.

"Whoareyouandwhatdoyouwant?" she rattled off.

"What?" he asked, somewhat surprised.

The bluenette leaned in even closer.

"Who are you and what do you want?" she asked tersely.

"My name is Hermes, and I'm here to see…" he checked the file Prometheus had handed him for this particular assignment, "Kaname Madoka?"

The bluenette leered at him as though he had a chickens head in his mouth in place of a tongue. He noted that she was armed with a sword and was clothed in, if he hadn't noticed other girls' outfits, what struck him as a faintly ridiculous getup.

"Now's not a good time," she snapped before darting back through the opening and slamming the door shut in his face, "Come back later!" she yelled through the door.

"Time has no meaning here! There is no later!" yelled Hermes, his frustration giving way to an internal promise on making certain that he'd take it out on the deity responsible for hiring such an inept doorman.

"You're right!" exclaimed the bluenette thoughtfully as she burst through the now open again door, "That means that any time you come would be bad!"

She quickly retreated back through the door and slammed it shut once more. Or would have, had Hermes not jammed his foot in first.

"Why? Why is this. Not. Working!" yelled the bluenette with increasing frustration.

Hermes pointed down. The bluenette followed his direction until she finally understood.

"Ooohhh…" she said, "Well, if you're going to be difficult about it, you may as well. Watch your step."

Hermes finally entered the castle… to find that the interior was actually quite different. The walls and atmosphere seemed to reflect a distinctive Japanese affair, whilst the artwork hung up on the walls, woven into the floor and painted on the roof was a combination of Indo-European, Russian, tribal African and… Picasso.

_Code violation, code violation, code violation, _was all that Hermes could think as he followed the bluenette.

"So… what's your name?" asked Hermes, not having forgotten the bluenettes stunt at the door.

"Sayaka Miki," she said, "Most people just call me Sayaka though,"

"I see, and Miss Kaname? What's she like?"

"Oh, you'll see soon enough," she said.

Frustrated, Hermes tried a different angle.

"Why isn't now a good time to see her by the way?" he asked.

"Now is her time to have tea and cake with Mami. Nobody disturbs that without an invitation to join. Nobody," she said seriously.

_Tea and cake?_ Thought Hermes, _What the hell?_

It was at this point that Hermes ran into a sword. Not the pointy end, the flattened side of one.

Hermes followed the length of the sword to a hand, and that hand down an arm and up a neck to the face of his escort.

"Why exactly are we-"

"Cat crossing," interrupted Sayaka.

"Cat crossing?" asked Hermes.

He needn't have asked. A dozen stray cats sauntered in front of them at their own pace. When they were through, Hermes made to move further forward but Sayaka held fast. He was about to ask when he finally saw why she was stopping him.

They came one at a time at first, lightning fast but certainly recognisable as cats. Then they came by the dozen and then the hundred, a veritable _horde_ of cats thundering through the crossing with catlike speed as only a horde cats is quite able to accomplish.

When the last of the cats had finally passed them by, Sayaka finally lowered her sword and lead Hermes the rest of the way to Madoka's throne room.

Before they entered, Sayaka bashed against the door several times before yelling.

"Yo! Madoka! There's some square here to see you!"

_Square?_ Thought Hermes with disdain, _Oh just you wait little miss!_

Hermes was finally admitted to Madoka's throne room. Several fountains gushed water in a beautiful display of hydro-engineering and physics, the marble floor was chequered white and black in the same fashion as a chess board, and at the centre of it all sat the new deity herself, Kaname Madoka, in her pink outfit with pink ribbons, pink hair, and golden eyes.

_Someone really needs to teach her that there's more to the world of colour than pink, _thought Hermes before clearing his throat.

"Greetings, my name is Hermes, I'm honoured to make your acquaintance Miss Kaname. I'm here on behalf of the Pan-Dimensional Multi-Pantheon Alliance and do hereby welcome you to the status of godhood on their behalf," he said in tones that were too tired and well practiced to be genuine.

"Ah, why thank you, would you like some cake?" asked Madoka sweetly.

"No thank you," refused Hermes politely, "As you are new to being a goddess, we do have some things to discuss, namely the new responsibilities you'll be laden with as well as the fact that we have to address some rather glaring code violations,"

"Code violations?" asked Madoka, bewildered.

"The Omni-versal code. It's sort of been written into the fabric of all existence and is something agreed to just by well… being here, really. There are a number of issues we need to discuss."

Madoka, for her part, seemed to be taking this quite seriously. She'd put down her tray of cake and set aside her tea. Hermes now had her complete and undivided attention.

_Good,_ he thought, _time to put her in her place._

"Like what?" asked Madoka levelly.

"This castle for one. It violates section 32 A subsection 9 of the builders code."

"I'm sorry, what?" asked Madoka.

"It was built without union approved labour," translated Hermes.

"I built this place! With my own imagination!" exclaimed Madoka.

"And you're not part of the builders union. Further more, there are multiple motif violations, specifically section 9 subsection 24, and section 12… actually, _all_ of section 12."

"And those are?" asked Madoka.

"Consistency of design, adherence to subjective sensibility in time and relative dimensions in space, artwork that should never be closer than twelve feet from one another and the presence of animals in the afterlife,"

"How was I supposed to know any of that?" asked Madoka.

"It was in the paperwork you were meant to have looked over on ascendancy," said Hermes tersely.

Madoka thought back until she could recall. There _had_ been a pile of paperwork waiting for her the moment she ascended to godhood. She'd managed to delve five lines into complex legalese before she'd decided it was probably better to dump the lot into the recycle and get straight into the busy work of saving a universe from despair and destroying her fallen witchself at some indeterminate point in the future.

"Um, about that…" said Madoka scratching her head in embarrassment, "I uh…"

"Threw it all out, didn't you?" deduced Hermes, "Well, that makes things simple then."

"It does?" asked Madoka hopefully.

"Oh yes. We'll just have to demolish the castle entirely. The grounds too. In fact, this entire realm will have to be demolished. All these human souls you've saved from despair will have to go right back where they came from too."

"What! No! You can't do that!" shouted Madoka.

"I'm sorry but it's the way it has to be until you've filled out the proper paperwork," said Hermes.

Madoka looked somewhere between appalled and infuriated at his words.

_Now for the sucker punch,_ thought Hermes.

"The cats I'm afraid will have to be put down as well."

"What." Said Madoka. It wasn't a question.

"All those cats. They're strictly against regulations. Most deities don't like the smell of inter-dimensional kitty litter, you see..."

While Hermes was babbling about the many and quite convoluted regulations surrounding cats, Sayaka, whom had been standing quietly and impassively next to and slightly behind Hermes to his left, took several very large and obvious steps away from Hermes. After which she thought the better of being even that close and promptly ran out the door.

Once upon a time in another life, Sayaka had only seen Madoka to get well and truly mad once and only once.

She had run into two boys that had been discussing the best way to set a cat on fire. Sayaka had simply wanted to report them to the police but Madoka had marched right up and given both of the boys a pair of black eyes, after which she'd also arranged to tip off the police and had personally informed their parents of their misdeeds. To say that Madoka loved cats was an understatement.

Hermes for his part had entirely failed to notice the very hard, imperious and thoroughly displeased look that had come over Madoka's face… until now.

"Hermes," said Madoka icily, "You come into my realm and my castle, you quote me regulation after useless regulation under the pretence of an authority that has no hold over me and you threaten the destruction and undoing of all of my hard work."

Madoka paused to take a breath, but she allowed her face to show not a whit of her inner turmoil.

"Worst of all, you threaten to have my cats killed. I have but one thing to say to that."

Hermes, wisely, stayed silent, but could not prevent himself from turning white as a sheet as Madoka directed her gaze at him before drawing out her bow and arrow.

As she did so, hundreds of Madoka's began appearing in pink flashes of light, each one a time-displaced variant of her future or past selves, each one in turn drawing her bow and arrow and aiming them directly at Hermes.

"We are not amused."


End file.
